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[WoW] Never underestimate the power of bloodthirst

So the NDA for press information about Pandaria has been dropped, and information about Warcraft’s next expansion is all over the internet.

I was especially intrigued that they’ve decided to inform the playerbase already about what the last fight of the next expansion is going to be. Horde and Alliance are going to siege Orgrimmar together and kill Garrosh. Won’t that be fun? It’ll be just like going to the Undercity in Wrath, but with different scenery.

One of the flaws of Cataclysm has been stated as players not really caring enough about killing Deathwing. He’s one of the Big Bad’s of the setting, but how much did most players really want him dead? Evidently not enough for many of them to stay subscribed. If I compare this with Wrath, the desire to put down the Lich King was genuinely one of the factors that kept my subscription going all expansion.

Now, about Garrosh. He’s been very inconsistently written all through Wrath and Cataclysm. In one zone, he’s a big damn hero (Stonetalon), in another he’s a windbag, and in another, he’s a romantic hero (Twilight Highlands) or a failure (same zone). Many players and characters see him as a dangerous warmonger. Who knows what Blizzard plan to do with him in Pandaria? (I’d guess ‘corruption’ since that happens to so many of WoW’s raid bosses in their backstory.)

But one thing is for sure, no horde player wants the Alliance to get involved in this. An internal coup is one thing, an entire expansion around a storyline in which the alliance are heroes who get to siege Orgrimmar and horde are losers …. that’s less appealing. This does sound like an ending in which the Alliance win.

I’m not sure I need to play to the end of Pandaria to see this one play out. I don’t like being on the losing faction all that much. But I do wonder if the expansion after Pandaria will see the Horde absorbed more into Alliance under Wrynn, with cross faction grouping included in the game.

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38 thoughts on “[WoW] Never underestimate the power of bloodthirst”

I don’t see the Horde as losers in this. *both sides* are taking down Garrosh, because both sides have reason to. (Or will.)

And I’m Horde-and I really don’t mind teaming up. I’m *against* the war. I’d rather have the PvP done via skirmishes and fighting against splinter factions. I like getting along with my neighbors. And no, it doesn’t have to be ‘Peacecraft’-there again, can be plenty of war via splinter factions who want to fight one another that people can join up with. There’s plenty of ways to do it besides a ham-handed old, worn out, faction war. I don’t see the Horde losing here, but winning in the sense they get rid of Garrosh and get a noble Warchief back who isn’t a steroid-infused warmongering buffoon. I miss my WC3 scrappy underdog Horde. I never rolled Horde to play a bad guy, and Garrosh is turning them into the bad guys.

I find it hard to see it as an alliance victory if they walk into Org and don’t burn it to the ground. I’m an ally player mainly, and I REALLY hope they scrap this terrible idea. We haven’t gone into Org yet because’ it’s a big ol’ fortress and we’d die trying. I like it that way. King Chin sneaking into undercity was cool, but I’d hope Sylvanas now knows about her secret back door.

Garrosh is good for the horde, Thrall is bad for everything… with any luck he’ll get the poochy treatment and we’ll never hear from him again.

Seriously though, if the horde wants to start tearing itself apart, the scab to pick is Sylvanas not Thrall. (But I hope they don’t do that either, cause’ they’ll fail miserably at that too, I bet.)

I suppose it’s how much you like Garrosh. By the sound of it, the story is being span that the Horde want him dead too. Also by the sound, Garrosh is doing *nasty stuff*-I wouldn’t doubt he might be spinning some Legion stuff-maybe one faction isn’t enough to deal with it alone(think LK.) While I am not one to trust Blizzard’s writers-I suppose I could put it like this. Thrall and some people help kill a corrupt Benedictus, whom ditched the Alliance for the Twilight’s Hammer. He was a fairly big figure. Is that a Horde victory? Or just a ”culling of an ex-Alliance nutbag?”

At this point I can see Garrosh as being ”Dead to Us” from the likes of, say, Saurfang(whom I see coming back for this-remember his threat in Northrend. Plus, Wrynn and Varok actually somewhat got along at the end.)

(Wanted to add an addentum-I know Benedictus wasn’t the Warchief of the Alliance, but taking out a prominent figurehead of any side in a war could be considered a victory.) Personally, I just saw Thrall and some people usurp a nutbag Twilight’s Hammer priest there-not the Benedictus, High Ranking Priest of the Alliance.

I guess I just think that invading an enemy’s capital city with an army sends a sort of message. (Alliance being involved in Wrathgate was a bit fuzzy also, and they wouldn’t have left if Thrall et al hadn’t been there too.)

I agrees with Spinks. The day I’s okay with a human army marchin’ inta Org is the day I go back ta a stockade in Arathi an’ meekly put me shackles on. Yeah, I wants Garrosh’s head on a pike, but I wants it ta be my pike.

Do you think you’d feel differently if, say, Garrosh took over…some random area of the Barrens or something as his ”New Pad”, and the siege happened there? Maybe he set up his fel blood laboratory or something out there. He goes nuts, leaves Org, builds a fel blood factory in the Barrens and starts committing war crimes against Alliance and Horde alike. (He does seem to be doing the latter in any case.)

I hate Garrosh, but not so much for the things he has done. I hate him as the embodiment of how awful Blizzard’s writing team is. Garrosh has made absolutely no sense since he left Outland. His behavior goes well beyond unstable or manic/depressive. He is just a poorly written character. Unless killing Garrosh as the final raid boss gets Metzen & company kicked off the lore team, it just isn’t going to be killing the big bad I really want to.

After seeing it in cold black & white I want to clarify. I don’t mean I want to see the lore team killed. By ‘kiling the big bad I really want to’ I mean destroying the poor character development and lazy writing (yeah, that boss fell to corruption, or madness, or the corruption of madness) that has only gotten worse each expansion.

While the idea is itself somewhat intriguing, I think it would have been neat if each factions leaders (Garrosh and Wrynn) were found to have both been corrupted and in cohoots with each other to take down BOTH the Alliance and the Horde populations. In other words, an end of days kind of scenario.

The last boss (or in this case, bosses) could have been both Garrosh AND Wrynn. For instance, for Alliance characters this would require fighting Garrosh in Ogrimmar, then finding out that Wrynn was actually part of the corruption and returning to SW for the final confrontation with Wrynn (and his minions, of course). For the Horde, the first battle would be against Wrynn and ultimately lead to Hellscream. The whole expac could pit Horde v. Alliance with the Pandarans (sp?) urging unity. Upon completion of the xpac, you would have truce between the factions as a result of the overthrow of both corrupt leaders. Blizz could then return to form and introduce a “common” enemy and the story could return with new leaders for both factions.

Obviously, you could do a lot more with this – those pleding fealty to Hellscream or Wrynn becoming faction fanatics, with the more unifying Pandarans realizing the deception and creating a new faction of moderates, etc. I dunno, just thinking out loud I guess…

Faction conflicts aside, I just find this whole development extremely odd. I never liked Garrosh, but with how much he was pushed on us during Wrath and now Cataclysm, I thought it was quite clear that someone at Blizzard really, really liked him and wanted him to be a good character, even if they continually failed to portray him as such. Deciding to simply let the players kill him after all feels like a 180 degree turnaround. What gives?

I also can’t help but be reminded of Staghelm, who used to be the Alliance bigwig that people loved to hate. Even though I didn’t like him either, I thought that simply having him turn irredeemably evil and become a raid boss was a very unsatisfying conclusion to his story.

As an Orc I don’t hate Garrosh. Why should I? And as an Orc and Horde I’m not against war. I’m not a peace loving hippie, I live to fight and die. And I’ve sworn to defend my city and fight the alliance.

The only thing I can think of is somehow the reapers indoctrinated Garrosh and thats why we are fighting him. Otherwise, I don’t see any explanation that works.

And of course this whole attack Org thing sounds wierd. Are we going to be forced to use UC as our home city? If we can still use Org then why assaut it? makes zero sense, not to mention future phasing issues.

Finally, would the romans have wanted the Carthaginians to come into Rome and oust Nero? Why would the Ors want the hated alliance to come to Org?

It looks as if they could not find a way to let Garrosh develop properly due to the bad initial introduction. I remember the first few weeks of Cataclysm and Horde headquarters was filled with players trying to insult Garrosh.

Those are the reasons why Blizzard thinks that killing off Garrosh will be no big deal.

However like Spinks points out, it is essentially an Alliance triumph over Horde. There is no way that can be glossed over. So what will it be now, having Thrall return as a kind of Duke to Wrynn’s King? Are we all Alliance now?

I know some players would be happy with that outcome. Many allies have been belly aching about Blood Elves being Horde side from day 1.

This was the problem I’ve been trying to call out since they announced they wanted to ramp up factional hostilities and they painted the Horde as unstoppable all through Wrath and Cata. There’s no real way out of this. If they paint it as an internal matter, then the Alliance is completely marginalized and emasculated, they’ll never be a compelling faction again. So the Alliance has to actually strike back at the Horde, as hard as the Horde has been running over them thus far.

What actually irks me far more is their plan to throw Garrosh away and hand the mantle of Warchief back to Green Jesus. It pretty much completely undermines the story they’ve been creating for the past four years, and comes off as a cheesy attempt to get a war going without getting Thrall’s hands dirty.

As an alliance player I don’t give a damn about Garrosh. I mean, who is Garrosh? What has he done? Why should I hate him? And why should I care? He’s not part of “my lore” while leveling. He doesn’t play an important role in “my zones”. I haven’t even met him.

He might be a dick. Or not. Who cares. It’s freaking horde business.

From an alliance point of view, Garrosh is just another Deathwing. He didn’t exist until MoP, for us. He’s like Deathwing – we heard once or twice that he is supposed to be evil. That’s it. And whatever he’s going to do during MoP will not be enough to make him an enemy I want to take down. (Is he going to burn down another tower in Stormwand while ignoring the important parts of the city? Seriously?)

Once again, it is Horde hogging the entire narrative focus, being the agency of change, etc etc. There is more personality in any one of your faction leaders (baring the belfs) than in all Alliance races combined. Where are is the tension between Night Elves and Humans? Or between Gnomes and Dwarves? Or anything interesting at all?

Re: Garrosh, unless you believe Metzen lies to peoples’ faces, they planned Garrosh’s fall from the beginning. The only real surprise here is that I expected Sylvanas to be the raid boss.

The narrative focus on Horde puzzles me too, but I don’t know why you’d see Alliance as the losing faction. There’s worgen I guess, but silverpine was always forsaken and all that happened is that it stayed forsaken.

It’s more that at some point the whole ‘The Alliance is being mistreated and ignored’, which was honestly pretty tenuous and requires ignoring everything that has been done in the game prior to Cataclysm, became a Thing. And now, being a Thing, no matter what happens it’s going to be an Issue.

Internal strife in the Alliance, given the reaction to Wrynn for example, would be met with just as much anger so I’m not exactly sure how Blizzard can win here.

That would be because Blizzard half assed the stories in a lot of the zones for the Alliance.

Westfall is eternally on fire, and Alliance players are told explicitly that there’s nothing more they can do but let it burn.

redridge ends with all the NPCs you spent the whole zone collecting getting killed off.

In WPL, despite killing off Sylvanas’ Val’kyr and having a chance at turning the tide in Andorhal, Thassarian decides to give up for the sake of bromance.

Southshore got wiped out without so much as a single quest to explain why.

Southern Barrens is more depressing for Alliance players than it is for Horde players.

Stonetalon is nothing but the player repeatedly failing to stop the bombing of the druidic school.

Swamp of Sorrows has the Alliance overrun Stonard, only to let the horde go, and as soon as the quest is turned in, the phasing reverts and the player gets slaughtered by the guards.

The Alliance counter attack in Ashenvale is defeated by a single kodo, and then the Alliance players spend the zone trying to clean up after the Horde’s demonic pacts that have corrupted the forest and forces alliance players to euthanize their own druids.

Thousand Needles has a long chain to drive the Grimtotem out of Freewind Post, gaining a valuable foothold that links Alliance forces in Feralas with the offensive in Southern Barrens. Blizzard forces the player to give the town back to the Horde.

The Alliance canonically lost Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley.

Twilight Highlands is spent trying to keep the Horde from steeling the Alliance’s beer and food.

Patch 4.1 introduced a Troll uprising that only Vol’jin could save the Alliance from.

Patch 4.3 saw the culmination of a crisis that involved the former alliance faction leader going crazy and only Thrall could save the Alliance.

Pretty much the only win the Alliance gets in Cataclysm was stomping out a poorly supported proxy tribe of Trolls that the Horde sent to deaths in Darkshore.

It’s less a matter of faction favoritism than it is absolutely terrible writing and Thrall terrible characterization warping the story around him in even worse manners. But the Alliance players got very little in Cataclysm, especially when compared to the storylines that the Horde got, and what little the Alliance did get, was almost uniformly them getting routed on all fronts or doing something truly idiotic.

The siege of orgrimmar is the culmination of the better part of four years of building up a terrible storyline that had no other outlet. Blizzard painted themselves into a corner, and they’re going to have to track some when they get out of it.

“Bottom line: the Horde interaction is multifaceted with many conflicting goals and desires among the groups. Alliance interaction is one-dimensional, for basically no reason. Horde has Wheel of Time meets Dune whereas Alliance has goddamn Jack and Jill meets See Spot Run.”

Write up the interactions between Alliance faction leaders. Write up the interactions between Horde faction leaders. Now, turn both papers into your English 101 course, and tell me which one gets the better grade.

The Alliance isn’t a faction, it’s a one-dimensional foil to the Horde.

Which would work if any time they’ve built any meaningful tension in the Alliance, it hadn’t been met with complaints about how they’re becoming too horde-like.

Putting aside the validity of some of Reissance Man’s complaints, such as Swamp of Sorrows, an event that runs exactly the same both ways because it’s essentially a replay of a Warcraft scenario, they both overrun he other sides base and then they both pull back, I’ve never quite understood the Thrall thing. We’ve spent more time having to hang round Malfurion and being told how cool he is this expansion than we have Thrall, neither of whom has been a patch on Tirion Fordring, who actually won a fight for you since you were too crap to, compared to Thrall who functionally plays your sidekick for most of his appearences. In fact, we spend more time with an obscure Nightelf lore figure than we do with Thrall.

The only real diffirence is for the first time in the entire game, we have a major Horde figure doing something other than being a raid boss. And since for many people this is a problem, it’s something that Blizzard appears to be addressing in the next expansion. And as much fun as saving humans from the dragons that you have no actual reason to be fighting was in vanilla or watching humans heroically deal with threats while an entire races raison d’etre gets sidelined into a minor side dungeon, it was nice not to actually have Blizzard pay attention to the Horde for the first time in six years in a way that doesn’t involve killing your faction leader for loots.

Six years of the Horde sitting on the back bench, including 60 levels of the game where you half your quests are alliance cast offs and suddenly faction imbalance is a problem when at absolute best, they’ve evened both experiences out?

RenMan: I see where you’re coming from but I’m still seeing ‘continuing war’ as an appropriate response, not ‘take enemy capital and execute enemy leader.’ Whereas you think no other response would work?

Patch 4.3: Staghelm was never an alliance faction leader, was he? I remember everyone hated him on alliance in vanilla and horde wouldn’t have known who he was. Also, alliance got an entire zone (Hyjal) in Cataclysm all about Night Elves and their leaders and their allies taking back their ancestral lands. We have also fought ex-horde leaders in raids/ instances before (like Kael). Alliance also got good lore in Wrath iirc.

Sub-60 zones. Mostly what happened there is that zones did not change hands, the big differences were in Gilneas and Hillsbrad. Yes, that’s a horde bias and I am expecting the forsaken to take a fall at some point in a future expansion, but alliance had a land advantage to start with. I don’t see the total alliance wipeout that you’re portraying. I also am not convinced that southern barrens was an alliance loss.

Staghelm is actually a good example of why I’m not sure the Alliance actually wanted internal tension, given that he was was a source of conflict, he did embody the more unpleasent parts of Night Elf culture like the racism and the xenophobia and he actually had a point admist all of his being a dick.

He was also possibly the only major NPC who players wanted to be allowed to kill more than Garrosh. People hated him and wanted him gone with an unusual venom and it was mostly because he was a source of tension and conflict within the faction.

I wrote that 6 months ago, when I spoke out against using factional conflict as a story line. I predicted the escalation of the conflict, and the fact that Blizzard doesn’t really have any other options at this point. I’ll give you the short version:

The Horde has been rolling the Alliance on all fronts. They’re pretty much unstoppable. The Alliance looks weak and disorganized. Back during the faction favoritism backdraft, Blizzard stated that they understand that for the health of the game both factions need to be viable and interesting. If the Horde collapses under internal tensions, then the Alliance is essentially castrated, they’re seen as the inferior faction that only survives because the Horde defeats itself. So therefore, the Alliance has to stand on its own and turn the tide of the war, because we know that the Alliance can’t loose the war. Once this happens, the Alliance will be in possession of a war machine that’s even more unstoppable and powerful than that which the Horde currently possesses. Think of it like Japan and America in WWII, once the Americans turned the tide at Midway, the war was over, we just needed enough people to die to make it official. So now the Alliance has a ridiculous war machine that threatens to crush the Horde, we know that the Alliance can’t loose, but we also know the Horde can’t loose. So, how does the Horde survive the onslaught of the Alliance’s newfound power? There’s two options, either the Alliance stops itself, and the blizzard hopes that interest in the Horde as a faction sustains itself based on the ridiculously skewed story of Cataclysm, or they come up with some ridiculously hackneyed Deus Ex Machina to save the Horde.

Either way, it’s horrible writing, because the writers didn’t take the nature of the medium they were working with into account before they started laying the foundation for the story. They can’t really drag the war out any, because it’s already at comically excessive extremes. The Horde is depopulating cities. They’re committing genocide in the story right now, and apparently they’re going to do even worse things in Mists, and there really isn’t anywhere else to go after that. If the war was still a bunch of brushfire skirmishes like it was in Vanilla and BC, you could drag it out a long time, but there’s a reason why the War in Afghanistan has lasted over a decade and WWII only lasted six years. Total war is unsustainable. You run out of people to kill.

As for the faction leader, they mutilated Staghelm’s story for the greater glory of Thrall in patch 4.2. In 4.3, they had Thrall give morality lessons to Benedictus, who was the Human Faction leader in patch 1.4.1.

Southern Barrens ended for the horde with the players blowing up the oldest Dwarf settlement on Kalimdor and assassinating the General in charge of the area in revenge for Camp Turajo, an assault that most of the Horde casualties were due to the Quilbor whom the Horde had been driving to extinction. The Alliance players in Southern Barrens go from hunting down an orcish warlord who skins Alliance soldiers and wears their heads as hats, to arresting human looters at the wreckage of Turajo, to finding out that the General who intentionally sparred as many Tauren lives as possible has been murdered, to being in Bael Modan as the Horde destroy it, to trying to keep their hands steady as they pour one last drink past the charred lips of the dwarf who had been giving them quests earlier to take the edge off his imminent painful death, to returning to Northwatch Hold as its being overrun by the Horde, and the defenders have been pushed to the point of firing silverware and dishes from their cannons because they’re out of ammunition. If you haven’t done Southern Barrens on both factions, I suggest you experience the Alliance side, it’s nothing but gut checks the whole way.

@Simon

Malfurion is neutral. He’s very poorly portrayed. He’s so neutral that he’ll stand by in Darnassus and watch as the Horde comes to murder his wife. He’ll even greet them if they click on him. He never says anything against the Horde since his implementation in WoW, and it’s extremely out of character from the the way he was portrayed in WCIII.

Also, I’m not sure what game you’ve been playing if you think that the Horde hasn’t been doing anything prior to Cataclysm. In BC, the Horde got a huge quest involving Garrosh and Thrall in Nagrand that there was no counterpart for on the Alliance side. Not to mention that the entire BC storyline was about the redemption of the Blood Elves, to the point where even the Alliance’s new racial leader was used merely as a plot device to advance that goal. Meanwhile, on the Alliance side, the Alliance racial leaders did nothing else, and the human racial leader bounced between Bolvar, Benedictus, and Anduin, who was a level 5 character at the time.

In Wrath, the Horde got a ton of compelling quests, they got closure for the forsaken, the induction of the Taunka, the storming of Azjol’Nerub, the sisters in Grizzly Hills, the relationship between Saurfang and Garrosh, and Sylvanas’ quest for vengeance in the 3.3 five mans. Of all the expansions, Wrath was by far the most balanced in terms of storytelling focus.

The problem with the story in Cataclysm is well, everything. Blizzard completely mangled it. The put the spotlight on a horribly written character, they glossed over way too much. they nuked 6 year old storylines for the sake of a cheap boost for Thrall. They completely imbalanced the factional warfare story which is directly seguing into the problems that people are seeing with the upcoming MoP stories. Blizzard bricked themselves up like they were looking for a cask of amontillado, and now they’re stuck with this route.

That’s the thing though. The Wrath quests the Horde got were the equivalent of protecting bread. Which would be fine because occasionaly, you get the bread protecting quest. The Horde vanilla experience was all about protecting bread.

Except they were protecting bread quests about major pieces of Horde lore. The entire reason for the Forsaken existence got resolved in a minor five man with ‘Oh, he’s too tough for us, let’s run away and let the humans solve it.’ and that’s the end of it. There’s no denoument for the Forsaken. Just running like cowards and having paladin save the day. The Tanuka is hardly the equivalent of the lore, story and proto-cutscene rich story of the return of the missing bronzebeard. Even the redemption of the Sunwell boiled down to a speech about how awesome the Draenei were.

The writing has always been bad because video game writing is generally made as they go along. The only difference is that the focus has shifted to the Horde story in a way that it hasn’t before.

Where do you see that the Siege of Orgrimmar is going to be the final event of the expansion? I saw it as one major event, but certainly not the climax of the entire expansion. Maybe I missed something, but didn’t they say all the time that the final boss of MoP would only be revealed during the expansion itself?

And as a Horde player (troll, tauren, and orc), I invite all Alliance to feel free to take down that sh*thead Garrosh, and I’ll stand by and /applaud them, too ;-)

Then you are not a real Horde. How can any real to the bone Horde side with the Alliance? If garrosh is such a problem then he is an internal Horde problem that the Horde need to solve by themselves. It goes against cannon to invite the alliance into Org to fight against Garrosh.

No matter how hated a leader might be he is still YOUR leader and while you might rebell against him you would never join your hated and sworn enemy to do it.

And there has to be some reason the alliance is wanting to fight. Say garrosh kills the SW king or prince. The Horde and alliance are now in full blown red hot war. You may not agree with Garrosh killing the guy but would you turn on your own people? Are Horde traitors?

The Horde and Alliance have pretty much been in a state of outright war since Howling Fjord. The Alliance doesn’t need any more reason to invade Orgrimmar and decapitate the Horde. The Horde needs motivation for this raid, but the Alliance just needs to show up.

Actually, my main is Alliance and he’s okay with Garrosh in charge. For one, if he alienates his allies, the horde collapses and the alliance wins.

My Horde main also likes Garrosh, he’ an actual warchief, and the best one around now that Thrall went all mary-sue Jesus Orc. Besides, if thehorde doesn’t collapse under his leadership, it wins. Gilnean and Gnome homelands are lost, so they’re essentially useless in the war. Draenei aren’t in the game anymore…(I think? Haven’t seen any since BC). The Nelves basically lost everything in cataclysm…. So all we have to fight are dwarves and humans.

No, Garrosh being the raid boss is just bad storytelling. My Ally characters want to retake Gnomeregan and Gilneas. Get Danath outta outlands and back in Arathi. Find out where Turalyon and Alleria are. Send a boat to Kul Tiras and find out what’s going on. Establish a War Council and boot out/execute Warchief Wrynn. As for Pandaria? Let the horde have it, the allies have WAY bigger concerns ATM.

Just a quick summary of how they could perform ACTUAL FUNCTIONS as equal members of an Alliance. I mean seriously, they’re called the alliance, I’d like to see that be reflected or changed to “The oppressed city-states of King I-wish-I-was-an-Orc”.

Wouldn’t Horde and Alliance have to have rather different raids? Sure storming Org would be fun, but what scenario enables Horde and Alliance players to run basically the same raid? The Alliance has allied with the faction seeking to overthrow Garrosh? And what part of the Horde is going to ally with the Alliance to do that, up to and including invading Orgimmar?

Now, as has been suggested azaael, if Garrosh is not in Org, if indeed he’s already been deposed and say, has decamped with a group of loyalists to the top of Dreadmist Peak, then I can see the Alliance and Horde doing essentially the same raid with the only difference in lore being the identity of the assassins who finally take him out.